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Hugh Pickens writes "The EFF argues that regardless of the heated debate over the propriety of the actions of WikiLeaks, some of the cables have contributed significantly to public and political conversations around the world. The Guardian reported on a cable describing an incident in Afghanistan in which employees of DynCorp, a US military contractor, hired a 'dancing boy,' an under-aged boy dressed as a woman, who dances for a gathering of men and is then prostituted — an incident that contributed important information to the debate over the use of private military contractors. A cable released by WikiLeaks showed that Pfizer allegedly sought to blackmail a Nigerian regulator to stop a lawsuit against drug trials on children. A WikiLeaks revelation that the United States used bullying tactics to attempt to push Spain into adopting copyright laws even more stringent than those in the US came just in time to save Spain from the kind of misguided copyright laws that cripple innovation and facilitate online censorship. An article by the NY Times analyzed cables released which indicated the US is having difficulties in fulfilling Obama's promise to close the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and is now considering incentives in return for other countries accepting detainees, including a one-on-one meeting with Obama or assistance with the IMF. 'These examples make clear that WikiLeaks has brought much-needed light to government operations and private actions,' writes Rainey Reitman, 'which, while veiled in secrecy, profoundly affect the lives of people around the world and can play an important role in a democracy that chooses its leaders.'"

You mean where a politician that we like was privately urging other countries to keep sanctions in place to the detriment of his countries poor in the hope of putting pressure on his political rival while publicly denouncing those same sanctions?

It is absolutely a double edged sword since 2-faced people we like can be exposed lying just like people we don't like.

Of course, history is full of perfectly good examples where we teamed up with one bad guy to help defeat a worse (or sometimes not) bad guy. Stalin was more of a sadistic mass murderer than Hitler was, by some accounts, and political fallout from that arrangement led to 40 years of itchy fingers on big red buttons and bouncing all over the world getting our troops (involuntarily) involved in one war after another, which led to us giving aid and support to the same people and groups that we're fighting an all-out war with today. The hindsight is obvious of course. We can see everywhere we went wrong. But then again, what if we ventured another way. What if we just re-armed after Pearl Harbor and kept an eye out for future Japanese attacks? What if we just wished England the best of luck and closed our borders. We might have avoided all of the cold war and all of the fallout from it. Maybe Hitler and Stalin would have just wiped each other out and left the rest of the world in Peace. Maybe... but I doubt it.

But just think.. the whole Israel vs the rest of the middle east thing could have been avoided. All the jews would be dead. Europe would still have a single currency and government run healthcare, that nobody would ever complain about. No Vietnam, no hippies, no cheap TV sets and cars, ALL of our oil would be drilled domestically, because the rest of the world would hate us, for entirely different reasons than they claim to hate us today. The world would never know nuclear war... at least not until someone else discovered it and decided to use our country as a testing ground. Probably no space program, no gps, no satellite TV, no google maps... probably no Internet at all, since most of these things came about as a fringe benefit of the various military engagements we were involved in.

In the end, history is just that. History. You can't change it, and even if you could, you might not want to. You're better off just learning from it, and attempting to avoid the same mistakes in the future.

The current Iran regime is in place only because USA had issues with previous one. If they don't like this Iran - well, if they still have the receipts, they can go back to the store and ask for a refund.

We chose Mao - and the result is the shitty, slave-labor society called mainland China which boasts such illustrious achievements as the world's worst, most overpolluted city, most dismal human-rights record outside of african juntas, and companies so criminally assholish they cause mass suicides (looking at you, Foxconn).

On the other hand, who would have been leader had the Kuomintang won? Sun Yat-Sen, who was yet another Communist? The path of the nation wouldn't have changed significantly, we'd just have "Chairman Sun" hats instead of "Chairman Mao" hats [google.com].

The history of the US intervening in foreign conflicts is rife with this sort of thing. But that's because the history of wars and conflicts and revolutions is rife with this sort of thing anyways. I hate to use a wikipedia list, but it's a handy reference, so here, take your pick [wikipedia.org] of revolutions and do some digging.

British revolutions kicked out corruption to replace it with more corruption - didn't matter whether they were revolting against parliament or following a pencil-dicked king who was angry that the pope wouldn't give him a fifth annulment. French Revolution? See also "bloody war followed by corrupt leaders followed by more revolution." Go back way back, look at Julius Caesar and the general "line of succession" of leaders of Rome. Wander over to earlier China and see what happened with the Han, Yellow Turbans, et al.

It's a sad statement on human nature, but very true: usually, the leaders of a revolution turn out to be just as corrupt as the assholes they overthrew. Why? "Power corrupts..."

People like to pretend that using others is justifiable if the people being used are at least marginally better than where they started. Unfortunately, that's simply not true, especially since if the people being used weren't being manipulated to support another crappy situation that is only 'better' in respect to looking at the rock bottom, they might just have been willing to fight longer and harder for a solution more beneficial to themselves.

It is absolutely a double edged sword since 2-faced people we like can be exposed lying just like people we don't like.

I don't get it. How is this a double-edged sword again? Seems like a win-win. I want to know that I like those people who truly deserve it. If someone exposes objectionable yet factual information to me about the people I like, I welcome it. Not to mention that I also have some capacity for forgiveness too, as I am sure do the others as well.

the case of 'movement for democratic change', which is so very well named (just like the poisonous bills that come to u.s. congress, hint hint) that was trying to topple a ruthless dictator who did not cooperate with united states, and instead place someone else who would be amiable to angloamerican corporations' moves in zimbabwe ? the very thing that caused all american news channels to dedicate their entire fucking daytime broadcasts to zimbabwe, over the course of six months while it was being pushed ? showing randomly running zimbabweans and putting up 8 talking heads to discuss the 'situation' (what situation ? running around of zimbabweans) at this particular day, when they werent able to find anything worthy of reporting ? and in the meantime, doing that while all kinds of shit, from koreas to piracy in high seas to afghanistan and iraq was way too heated to not be reported, but, conveniently not reported, because the fucking 'lets put an american friendly puppet' play was in session in zimbwabwe ?

yeah. THAT case. that zimbabwe. and on the other hand, uniformed, ignorant gullible fools like you. too easy to manipulate.

The corrupt politician at least gets you a path to better government. The dictator will be in place until his death, which could take quite a while.

Actually, you are wrong. A dictator invites revolution, and hence paves a way to a vastly better society. A corrupt politician will keep the people docile enough to get away with his schemes, because his schemes depend on the lack of opposition. Shamelessness is easy to spot. Those that hide in plain view are the ones you should fear the most.

They also lead revolutions. Mugabe initially came to power as a revolutionary hero. Violent revolutions rarely deliver on their promises of a vastly better society, they simply demonstrate that "might is right".

I won't go into the topic of African 'revolutions'. Most of them are either not revolutions at all, but coups backed by the US dollars and thirst for oil, or otherwise successful revolutions that end up getting negative press coverage, again backed by US dollars and thirst for oil. I've got buddies from Sudan, Somalia, and other African countries, that more or less told me the same stories about the developments in their respective countries, and if you, on occasion, substitute France for the US, you get a

Given the choice between a brutal dictator or a corrupt politician who could just as easily become a brutal dictator were he in power, frankly I would choose to keep looking for the third option and stop creating a false dilemma [wikimedia.org].

I think a lot of that has to do with NPR and TDS not being 24 hour news networks. NPR spends a lot of time on other things which aren't news, such as a Praire Home Companion and the game shows they air.

Trying to air 24 hours of news every day is a large part of what got those other networks into trouble. There just isn't enough news resources to fill the time legitimately. So you end up with commentary by people that aren't qualified to comment or the editorial standards to tell them that opinion is fin

And such incidents are certainly despicable. But the powers that are probably do not think that this is a good idea. Does the US government want discussions about whether "private armies" are a good idea? Do they want Pfizer outed as a company that pressures third world countries into complying? Or that they bullied Spain into passing insane copyright laws?

Sadly, the interests of the people and their governments are not the same. Which makes me wonder, wasn't there something about "by the people for the people"? If a government does not serve its alleged masters, as a democracy (or republic, for you nitpickers) claims to do, what good is it then?

Sadly, the interests of the people and their governments are not the same.

Sadly, the interests of the people are represented by government more than we want to admit. That's why many would prefer some things remain secret, so they can live fat and happy while convincing themselves nothing is wrong.

Does the US government want discussions about whether "private armies" are a good idea?

If there were private armies, you'd have a point. But the forces in question aren't private armies (that is armies that answer to an authority other than the government), they're contracted security forces. The problem isn't their existence, it's inadequate training, supervision, and accountability.

Sadly, the interests of the people and their governments are not the same.

That's why I prefer our system of campaign financing. If you manage to get a certain amount of votes, you get your invested money back. It may look odd to pay for election ads with tax money, but at least I can imagine that I bought my politician and not some company.

The law wasn't approved in Spain because the opposing parties didn't support it, true, but that had little to do with wikileaks.

Most Spanish politicians simply ignore the whole wikileaks deal; they don't mention it, publicly, at all. I think many of them don't even understand what wikileaks is (besides the most obvious effects of exposing some of their dirty clothes to the public)

The lack of support happened because the opposing parties didn't get the benefits they wanted in other negotiations. It was a reprisal to the governing party, which proposed the law. It would have happened just the same without wikileaks.

It was one of those occasions in which the egoistical interests of a few benefited the many. Which is funny and sad at the same time.

The call for Assange to be prosecuted for something, anything, is the bipartisan consensus position in Washington. The conservative position is for Assange to be summarily executed. So poking fun at Peter King for hypocrisy may be fun and all, but it's not a great argument.

Really, the reaction to Wikileaks has been so dramatic that I have to think that they have something really really damaging on somebody that they haven't released yet. And it has to be more damaging than evidence of war crimes, because when Dick Cheney proudly stated that he ordered waterboarding (which was a war crime when the US accused the Japanese of doing it) on national TV, not much happened.

Really, the reaction to Wikileaks has been so dramatic that I have to think that they have something really really damaging on somebody that they haven't released yet.

Dramatic? Really? Apart from some tempests-in-a-teapot drummed up by attention whores (of which the summary above is a prime example), the reaction has mostly been non-existent. No governments have fallen. No politician has resigned. Nobody has been arrested, let alone arraigned. Etc... etc... Don't confuse internet karma whoring with r

Perhaps he's for freedom of information and people - people including Julian Assange - and arguing in favor of the latter by saying that perhaps people who argue against freedom for some people could and should have their arguments turned against them, including saying "if person X thinks person Y should be prosecuted because they {blah blah blah}, person X should be prosecuted for {something like blah blah blah}"?

Should be a Murphy law regarding Wikileaks... no matter how bad the leaks looks so far, there will be always something worse about to be disclosed. And that without even touching banks, that was supposed to be the next target.

With a bit of luck the illusion of "but we are the good ones" will become more evident with this.

I'm pretty sure if the greatest leader in the history of mankind, a person who has found the solution to all the world's problems - went for an election as an independant candidate he would still not get any amount of votes worth reporting.

Happens everywhere you understand. Red States/Blue States.. you think they care whether their leader is a baby-eating psycho or a good human being? Nope.

Ah yes, you see children when people who are unhappy with the government beak the law by doing things like spraying illegal protest graffiti on the walls they're actually being dictators because they're breaking the law.... oh wait.that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.merely breaking the law in some way shape or form doesn't automatically make you the dictator.

Citation sorely needed. Wikileaks has not broken any laws. Pfc Manning did break some laws if he did what he's alleged to have done. But Wikileaks hasn't violated any laws and the case law on that is quite clear. Spreading the leaked information is protected by our 1st amendment. Despite Bush era beliefs to the contrary, the constitution applies to the US government no matter where it's operating.

I sure hope they're talking about a random soldier rank pv2 E1 whom happens to be named "Obama" not the much more famous guy at the tippy top peak of the military chain of command of the worlds largest most powerful military. You'd think the C-in-C might have enough power to take care of this without begging other countries for help?

I'm not trying to debate right or wrong here, trying to focus on an utter lack of efficiency and competence. We're not talking about rewriting the worlds biggest most corrupt

Here in Denmark, the newspaper Politiken recently got access to all the documents. They found that which the (right-wing) government had publicly said that they would firm ask the US whether the US used Danish airspace for extraordinary rendition [wikipedia.org], the government privately told the US that they did not really want any answers.

A good example of how WikiLeaks can expose governments acting against their citizens interest. It might not be in the US's interest to expose this, but it is certainly in my interest as a citizen.

The most serious of torture cases involve placing prisoners in the hands of other nations where the most radical tortures and deaths are applied with great frequency. We urgently need laws that forbid our government from transferring prisoners to other nations.
For those that think it doesn't matter we already allow corporations to run prisons in the US and it isn't much of a reach to think that they might export a burgler from Brooklyn to Egypt for fun and games knowing that that convict will surely perish in custody.

While I think Islam is a vile practice too sick to be called a religion, especially with their treatment of women and children, to be fair from what I've read that particular "tradition" is only among the Pashtun tribes and the others look down upon them for their sick shit. But the Pashtuns have been very powerful in their territory and as in all things with power comes the ability to do whatever the hell you want and get away with it.

And frankly with all the reports of Blackwater (or whatever bullshit name they call themselves this week) trying to recreate "Full Metal Jacket" all over the middle east while we pay them big bucks to do so honestly we've lost so much of the moral high ground we don't really have much room to talk on the subject of evil shit. A parable about pointing out splinters while there is a log in your eye comes to mind. But blaming the Muslims for what the Pashtuns do would be like blaming Christianity for what those Mormon polygamists do. If you read the article [bbc.co.uk] one of the above posters linked to you'll see they went to the local Mullah who said flat footed it is child abuse and that it is happening because there simply isn't ANY law there.

To find other brave wikileaks activists, just look at the names on the subpeona: Jacob Appelbaum @ioerror -Tor spokesman who subbed in for Julian Assange at the HOPE conference, and a lot has been written about him elsewhere, including Rolling Stone. He's on the way back from Iceland to Seattle today, so hopefully he won't be detained again. There's a crowd of wikileaks supporters waiting for him. Rop Gonggrijp @rop_g - Hacker/activist who helped produce and release the Collateral Murder video. He no longer works for wikileaks since he's spending most of his time cracking voting machines in India/Brazil.
Birgitta Jónsdóttir @birgittaj - The Icelandic Parliament Member with an impressive history of activism.

All of these people have done more for the spread of democracy and freedom of speech than most of us ever will. No wonder they are under investigation by the DOJ.

Bashing religion is a noble/. past time, just as long as it is poking fun of Christians (I'm not one). The point the guy was making is that while it is easy and harmless to bash Christians (or even Jews), it isn't nearly as harmless to bash Islam and Muslims.

Yeah, and ask Mathew Shepard [wikipedia.org] about Christian tolerance. It's easy to find the exception that proves the rule, but the reality is that Christians are hardly better than Muslims in that respect. They just have better PR.

Beyond that, there's little if any relevance in this to Wikileaks. We already know that there's a small minority of Muslims that will kill over criticism of their religious beliefs.

Hey, we all have our hot buttons. I even know a rather famous tribe somewhere on this globe that has members that consider it a provocation when people burn a piece of cloth. But only if the cloth is painted in a particular pattern with red stripes and a blue decorated rectangle. Most other patterns are fine. Just as with the Muslims, only a few hotheads in this tribe get really angry, but it's still a remarkable phenomena.

As always, there are other people of this tribe that consider that anger silly and stupid, but hey, there are always some hotheads. It also doesn't help when someone stokes the fires by describing the so-called provocation in the most exaggerated possible terms. Despicable, I know, but I'm afraid these people exist, both in Muslim countries and with that famous tribe.

One man's insult is another man's transparency. There are already documents on Wikileaks from Scientology and the church of latter day saints, adherents to those religions would certainly call the hosting of their private docs "insulting". Hosting an existing pic of Mohamed, wouldn't be much different.

Creating a new one, just for shock value and insult ? That would cross the line to being an asshole.

Hid? He gave his (temporary) address to the UK police. He wasn't hideing. He was just making the Swedish prosecutors go through every piece of paperwork he could, thus ensuring maximum embarassment for them. Last I heard he still is, dragging things out in court as long as possible.

where in that is there anything about him being in hiding?he gave his address to the UK police before he handed himself in.He has a right to fight extradition through the legal system like anyone else.

In your world does any attempt to defend yourself legally in court constitute being "in hiding" or something?

I see. He didn't voluntarily submit to the whims of a foriegn government who he (correctly or incorrectly) felt to be motivated by the hostile 3rd government who was calling him a traitor and treasonous for doing the same thing the NY Times legally does...... and instead consulted a lawyer as to how to fight what he felt were politically motivated charges against him.

What an evil bastard he must be. Clearly mounting a vigorous defense and exploring all your legal avenues is the mark of a guilty individual.

Citation necessary. If he was hiding from the Swedish police he was doing a piss poor job of it. They were always able to contact his attorney, the hiding had more to do with the concern for his safety in light of all the vigilante advocates out there.

And of course he fought the extradition, while he had previously volunteered, volunteering previously does not negate his right to challenge the extradition and to demand that it be done in accordance with the law. Once the British legal system makes a dete

The difference between individual privacy and government secrecy is that individuals can be directly harmed, while governments (and other organizations, like corporations) can only be exposed, and power shifts hands. Members of an organization need to be informed to make good decisions, and, in the case of a democratic government, the members are the citizens. Secrets and misinformation make an organization/constituency less informed, and more prone to making bad decisions. It's not a matter of privacy, since organizations aren't individuals.

The difference between individual privacy and government secrecy is that individuals can be directly harmed, while governments (and other organizations, like corporations) can only be exposed, and power shifts hands. Members of an organization need to be informed to make good decisions, and, in the case of a democratic government, the members are the citizens. Secrets and misinformation make an organization/constituency less informed, and more prone to making bad decisions. It's not a matter of privacy, since organizations aren't individuals.

One of the many problems with this is the demand for 100% governmental transparency unless that involved exposing individual privacy. The extreme views clash.

Which is why the moderate views dominate. Not everything done by the government need be open, but there DOES need to be some means to hold everyone in the government accountable. Giving them unchecked power has a habit of turning out very badly.

I completely agree. Alas, you won't find this viewpoint shared by Wikileaks or their supporters it seems.

> Alas, you won't find this viewpoint shared by Wikileaks or their supporters it seems.

Yet I am one of those supporters (and I posted the comment to which you replied) and I do hold more moderate views.

In response to the most common criticism, I do not think that WL just "dumped" the cables. They partnered with a variety of responsible news organizations, embargoed them, and gave them time to develop stories using the material. The vast majority still aren't public (feel free to show me where one can g

So last time you checked you woke up on the first Tuesday in November and voted?

Because last time I checked the people who end up running on that day had gone through years if not decades of vetting and promotion by the public (and corporate interests and political parties) to get to that point.

One persons scandal is another persons boring drivel.A dull little cable about a diplomat having a meeting about banking regulations can be a non story for most people while for a few it can unveil how a politician ignored advice that may have averted a crisis.